Titanium alloy wire is a wire-shaped profile drawn from an alloy composed of titanium (Ti) and other elements such as aluminum, vanadium, molybdenum, zirconium, etc. It features a low density (about 4.5g/cm3). With core advantages such as being only 57% of steel, high strength (tensile strength can reach over 1000MPa), excellent corrosion resistance (stable in seawater and strong acid environments), and good biocompatibility, it is widely used in aerospace, medical devices, Marine engineering, high-end equipment and other fields. Its production needs to overcome technical difficulties such as "high-temperature plasticity control, surface quality assurance, and stable dimensional accuracy". The core process can be divided into raw material preparation, alloy smelting, plastic processing (rolling/drawing), and subsequent treatment.
Titanium alloy wire has extremely high requirements for raw material purity (titanium purity must be ≥99.7%, that is, "sponge titanium" grade ≥TG1). Impurities (such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, iron) will significantly reduce the plasticity and fatigue performance of the alloy. Therefore, the core of raw material preparation is "titanium purification" and "alloying element ratio".
Titanium is prone to react with oxygen, nitrogen and carbon at high temperatures to form brittle compounds (such as TiO2 and TiN), so it must be melted in a vacuum or inert gas environment. The core objective is "uniform composition, no impurities and dense ingot", and the mainstream process is "vacuum consumable arc melting (VAR)".
The subsequent treatment of titanium alloy wire directly affects its final application performance (such as fatigue life, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility), and the core includes three major links: "heat treatment, surface treatment, and quality inspection".
